


we need to be together (like the shore and the sea)

by littlebassoonist



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, In Which the Author Definitely Doesn't Work Out Her Neuroses About Music Performance, The Reylo Double Reed AU Nobody Asked For, musician au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24279187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlebassoonist/pseuds/littlebassoonist
Summary: Rey is the new first bassoonist at the Skywalker Conservatory, and she's only 90% sure that there's been a mistake. Surely there's another musician out there, one who owns her own horn, who has been taking private lessons since age five, whose parents played her Mozart as a baby, who has perfect pitch and doesn't feel like crawling out of her skin when she plays for an audience. Surelythatgirl should have gotten the spot, not Rey.And then there's the matter of the douchebag oboist blocking her view of the conductor.A Musician!AU-meets-College!AU in which Rey plays bassoon and Ben plays the oboe.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 33
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags. This fic will deal with past self-harm. 
> 
> I once saw a Reylo fic with a tag along the lines of "The Weirdly Specific AU I Am Uniquely Qualified to Write", and that immediately had me thinking about my own oddly specific areas of interest.

_Casual mixer, my ass,_ Rey thinks when she looks around the hall. The multipurpose room is done up with ivory curtains draped over the walls, an arch of golden balloons, and a canopy of yellow fairy lights to counter the dimness of the evening. There’s a wine bar in one corner and in another, a photo op wall that looks like it might be covered in hundreds of keys—tiny pieces of metal glinting like stars in the gold light.

If this is what the Skywalker Conservatory considers casual, she can’t imagine their idea of a formal soiree. 

The only thing about this evening that feels casual is the nametag she’s encouraged to wear with her name and instrument, but even that is on cardstock and slipped into a laminated lanyard. They couldn’t besmirch anyone’s outfits with a HELLO, MY NAME IS sticker. 

Rey’s thrift store dress has probably been besmirched by a number of stickers. She felt good about her appearance when she left her apartment because no matter how many people had worn this dress before, the green still makes her eyes shine. But here, seeing her future colleagues and professors in evening attire, she gets the sneaking suspicion that her acceptance to the Conservatory was a mistake.

Finn doesn’t seem to be here yet, which means she knows absolutely nobody who isn’t a teacher. She fumbles her way through an introduction to the woman handing out nametags—a purple-haired vocal coach who asks to be called Amilyn—catches sight of another girl wearing a dress that doesn’t look like it came out of a magazine, and makes a beeline for her. Rey goes as fast as she can while still maintaining the illusion that she _isn’t_ chasing down a total stranger.

Her nametag reads “Rose – Clarinet”, and thank God, she looks just as uncomfortable as Rey feels. 

“Hey,” Rey says. She sticks out a hand to shake.

Rose takes it. “I’m Rose. I’m new.”

“Rey. Me too.”

“Oh, you’re British!” 

“Yeah. Came to the States for school.”

“Do you miss it?”

Rey thinks of Unkar, of the dozens of families before him, of the streets of London, of Maz’s warm but tiny home. The last week in her campus apartment has already been kinder to her than years in foster care, even if she has been eating exclusively Ramen noodles and oatmeal. “Not yet. Maybe in a few months.”

A young woman who looks suspiciously like Rose walks up with a glass of wine in each hand. She passes one to Rose, who introduces the newcomer as her older sister, a flutist. 

“Paige. It’s my last year here, unless I decide I hate myself enough to go for a master’s.” She cracks a grin. “That’s a joke. I definitely hate myself enough to go for a master’s.”

Rose rolls her eyes and chuckles. “Paige! Don’t scare her away.”

“Do you want me to get you some wine?” Paige offers. 

Rey looks around shiftily. “Er, yeah—but aren’t American laws…?”

The older girl waves her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Half of the point of the wine here is to help younger students get to know the older ones. You want to drink, you make friends with juniors and seniors. The other half is because the professors need it even more than we do. They have enough self-loathing to get _PhDs_ in music.”

Rey and Rose laugh as Paige saunters back to the bar. 

“Must be fun, having her as a sister.”

“Oh, sure—except for our parents constantly comparing us. I thought about going to Berklee just so they’d stop making it a competition—but I like the program here better.”

“Only child here. Can’t imagine what that would be like.”

It’s only sort of a lie. The foster parents who had other children, biological or otherwise, never lasted long enough for Rey to consider herself a sister. 

Paige returns with Rey’s drink. Rey is incredibly grateful, not so much for the alcohol as for _something to do with her freaking hands._ The wine is some kind of red, probably a cab—she’s sure that most of the attendees here would know if those are notes of currant or hints of cherry that she’s tasting—but it is dry and gives her something to hold onto. 

“So, why the bassoon?” Rose asks.

It’s a bog-standard question for a bassoonist, one Rey is more than used to. “It’s a little embarrassing, so you’ll have to promise not to think less of me. I was in Year Six when I heard Knights of Ren on MySpace, back when they were just starting out. Hadn’t gone big yet. But they had one track—one they reworked to be ‘Starkiller’ a few months later—with the oboe on it. I still haven’t a clue why they let Kylo play the oboe on an indie rock song, or how that song went mainstream, but I loved the sound of the oboe and wanted to play it. 

“I told my music teacher so, which was difficult because I didn’t even know the name of the instrument I was listening to. She said another student was already using the school’s horn, so if I wanted to play it, I would need to rent or buy my own. _But_ , she did say that the school had a bassoon I could learn instead. The rest is history.”

Rey still wasn’t sure if Maz had been entirely truthful about the school’s inventory of instruments. She has a suspicion that they might have had a second oboe, but the crafty music teacher wanted a bassoonist among her ranks. Even if it were true, Rey can’t be mad. Maz had a knack for knowing which instruments would suit which students.

“So what you’re saying is,” Paige chimes in, “there’s a parallel universe Rey who plays oboe?”

“She must be very miserable,” Rey says sagely. 

The three women laugh, and for the first time that evening, she feels comfortable.

“The more important question is do you still listen to the Knights of Ren?” Paige asks. 

“Not really. I mean, I put their old stuff on for nostalgia’s sake every now and then, but ever since they went all mainstream and Kylo left… They’re not really my scene anymore. They just sound so sterile, you know? Plus, I’m pretty sure they’re all assholes, and that sours me on even their good tracks.”

“What makes you say that?” Rose says. 

Rey scrunches her face in embarrassment. “This is a little mortifying, but… I’m thirteen, right? I love this band to bits and can start playing the bassoon well enough that I don’t sound like a dying whale. So I record myself playing some of their songs and put this Knights of Ren medley on YouTube. Mind, it’s all done on a crappy iTouch, but it’s a labor of love. 

“That is _adorable_ ,” Rose sighs. 

“Yeah, well, it stops being adorable when Kylo Ren himself, with his Twitter-verified account and everything, finds the video and comments ‘don’t quit your day job lol.’ Hircine, Malacath, Meridia, and Mephala Ren all wrote worse things, but Kylo’s comment hurt the most. My teacher had to convince me not to quit music altogether.” 

“What douches!” Paige says. “He said that to a thirteen-year-old?” 

“I mean, he had no way of knowing how old I was, but I was obviously just a kid. I didn’t practice for a month, and I could barely look at my horn without crying.” She tactfully leaves out the part of the story where she started cutting herself to keep from having panic attacks when she thought about music. No matter Paige’s cavalier comments about self-loathing and Rose’s compassionate eyes, some things are best not shared. “Still makes my blood boil to think about.”

“Shit,” Paige says, though she seems to be thinking hard. “Good for you for not quitting. If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure he went and had a total meltdown. Drugs, quitting the band, embarrassing fights in public that got caught on camera, all that jazz.”

“Yeah, that was right before they were set to tour in the UK, actually. Even after the cyberbullying, or whatever you want to call it, I still would have wanted to see them—”

Rey is interrupted by the sound of a microphone being tapped. A woman she recognizes as Dr. Leia Organa, the dean of music, offers a tight-lipped smile as she waits for the chatter to simmer down. She is also clearly well into what is not her first glass of wine.

“Thank you, everyone, for being here this evening,” she says. “To the incoming class of students, I hope you will take this opportunity to meet your professors and to befriend the people with whom you will be making music. To our returning students and staff, welcome back, and do try to talk to at least one person you don’t know. And I know all of you, so I don’t count. Don’t talk to me.”

That gets a flurry of chuckles from the crowd.

“Dr. Organa seems a little drunker than usual,” Paige comments under her breath. “She usually waits until later in the semester to act like she doesn’t like us.”

“You are all excellent musicians here to hone your skills and make art together. I hope that tonight will help you all form relationships that will make your music that much richer.” Dr. Organa takes a deep breath, eyes flickering to the cup in her hand. “Go nuts.”

The conversations resume, now louder with the dean’s blessing to ‘go nuts,’ and someone puts music on a speaker system. It’s not traditional party music, Rey notes, but a Bach piano prelude, straight from _The Well-Tempered Klavier_. Because of course it is. 

“Paige!” A young man slaps a hand on Paige’s back. He gives the girls a lopsided grin. “Your sister, I presume? I’m Poe. French horn.”

They shake hands and make the necessary introductions. 

“I see Dr. Organa is repurposing the décor from her divorce party,” Poe notes to Paige. “Not that this little shindig could hold a candle to that night, but it’s good that the stuff isn’t going to waste.”

“Divorce party?” Rose gapes. 

“Yeah, but we’re all pretty sure she and Han banged by the end of the night.”

“I’m sorry—Han, as in Han Solo?” Rey asks, shocked. “Rock Hall of Fame Han Solo?”

“Oh, to be young and innocent again,” Poe says wistfully. “Yeah, Han guest lectures and does guitar lessons for the pop side. A classical major like you won’t see much of him—unless you plan on going all Béla Fleck with the bassoon?”

“Uh-uh,” Rey objects, “don’t derail the conversation. You were just telling us that _our dean_ slept with a washed-up rock god who just happens to teach here.”

“Honey,” Paige says, “Han and Dr. Organa were the divorcés throwing the party. He’s her ex.”

“Ex-husband,” Poe corrects, “not ex-lover, apparently.”

“Does she seem extra drunk tonight?” Paige asks. “Do you think she and Han fought?”

“No more than usual. Nah,” Poe says, obviously proud of himself for knowing _something_ important, “her son’s one of the new students.”

This statement is meaningful to Poe and Paige, judging by their faces. Rose and Rey look at each other with raised eyebrows. 

“Hey Poe,” Paige says with a knowing look, “Rey here used to be a Knights of Ren fan.” 

His mouth pops open in surprise. “No shit! There’s someone you have _got_ to meet.”

Rey tries to protest as Poe pulls her toward the photo op wall, says she not into the band anymore, that it was just an embarrassing preteen phase, that she really ought to find Finn and at least say hello. But Poe is walking her up to the photo op wall, and there’s a man there, and the world _stops_.

They aren’t keys, Rey realizes idly as she gets a closer look at the backdrop to the photo wall. Not traditional keys, anyway—they’re pieces from old instruments: tuning pegs, valves, bent and broken keys from woodwinds, the odd mouthpiece, bits of metal that she can only assume come from some kind of percussion instrument, all threaded together on fishing wire so that they seem to float. It’s lovely, really, except, except, except—

“Hey, Solo!” Poe calls, making the man jerk his head up. “Found an old fan of yours.”

Except standing in front of the wall is Kylo fucking Ren, hands shoved awkwardly in his pants pockets and looking like he wishes he were anywhere else but here. 

Her brain stutters, trying to confirm if it’s really him. Her eyes flicker to his nametag, which is flipped the wrong way around—which wouldn’t be a problem if they’d used stickers like plebeians, Rey thinks—but then she feels stupid. She’s 98% sure his real name isn’t Kylo Ren because what the hell kind of name is that, and would he make all of his bandmates use stage names just to match his real name? That nametag definitely does _not_ read “Kylo – Oboe”. 

He’s grown up. He must have been very young when he started playing—he doesn’t look _that_ much older than Rey—and gone is the gawkiness she remembers him having. This man is all shoulders and absurdly tall. But he _is_ Kylo, with those ears, that jaw, those cheekbones, the messy hair.

“You bastard,” Rey hisses under her breath. 

“Uh, what?” Kylo says dumbly. 

“You’re Kylo Ren,” she states.

He rolls his eyes. “Oh, Jesus. Poe, what did you—”

“You made me want to quit playing music! You made me doubt myself for years!”

His eyes flicker from her face to her nametag, or maybe he’s checking her out, she isn’t sure. Not for the first time that night, Rey wishes she were wearing something other than a consignment shop dress. 

“Wait, the bassoon girl from YouTube?”

“Oh, fuck you,” she says.

Before she knows what she’s doing, Rey hits him. 

She has _just_ enough control to keep from outright decking him; her fist would probably not hold up well against his face, and she needs her fingers in good health if she wants to keep her spot as principle bassoonist. (And, she realizes in the back of her mind, he’s a musician, too, and a bloodied mouth or nose could put him out of commission.) She settles for slapping him across the cheek, like in so many bad movies, and she can’t deny that it soothes some of the resentment that has stewed in her for so many years.

Kylo, or whatever his real name is, gapes at her. His cheek starts to bloom red. She imagines it must sting, a twin to the ringing electricity in her palm. 

Distantly, Rey hears Poe say, “Oh, this is way better than the divorce party.”

The room erupts into life around her. Some people try to resume their conversations as though nothing strange has happened, others murmur about what the hell the new British girl just did, and others still close in around them. Kylo doesn’t move, and neither does she, until a body steps between them.

“Let’s take this somewhere else, shall we?” a voice that presumably belongs to the body suggests. It’s a familiar voice, and then it clicks in the back of her mind: Luke, the bassoon teacher she met at auditions.

Which is when Rey realizes that she has just _hit_ someone before her first day at music school, and that someone is also _famous_.

Didn’t Poe call him “Solo”? They had just been discussing Han, and—no—he can’t be—

“Rey Niima, first bassoon,” Luke says, having ushered the two of them to a hall decked out in posters for upcoming shows and concerts, “meet Ben Solo, first oboe and recent transfer from Julliard. Though it seems you know him better as ‘Kylo Ren.’ Now what has my naughty nephew done that inspired you to slap him?”

_Nephew?_ Rey tries to parse out a family tree in her head. Luke’s last name isn’t Solo; he’s a Skywalker, son of the man the school was named for. So not Han’s brother, which means he’s related on Ben’s mother’s side—and she just found out that Han used to be married to—

Oh, no.

Sometime while Rey’s brain was busy stumbling to the conclusion of Kylo Ren’s—Ben Solo’s—the annoyingly tall asshole’s—parentage, Dr. Organa joins them in the hall. 

“Ms. Niima,” she says, sounding entirely too _done_ with this evening, “please don’t assault my son again, even if he deserves it. And I don’t doubt that he does.

“Ben, you knew that some of your… less inspired choices would have consequences. Now will one of you please explain what is going on between you two?”

Rey clumsily retells her story of adoration and betrayal and knows her face must be as red as Ben’s cheek. When she quotes his stupid comment, Luke glares at his nephew, while Dr. Organa maintains the disappointed look she has worn since her arrival in the hall.

“I’m sorry I hit your son,” Rey tells the dean. “I understand if this means I can’t keep my spot at the school. I’ll return my horn and can be packed by tomorrow afternoon.” She doesn’t know where she’ll go next, but that’s nothing new.

“You’re not expelled, Rey. But I won’t tolerate any more violence between students. And Ben, I think you owe this girl an apology.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, not meeting her gaze.

“Yeah.”

“I was just sixteen, you know,” he adds.

“Not an excuse.” And it’s not, but Rey does admit to herself that sixteen is awfully young. 

“Maybe not,” he concedes, “but it was definitely too young to be that famous.” Out of the corner of her eye, she can see that Luke looks ashamed. “So I was a dick, and nobody stopped me.”

Ben raises himself to his full height, and Rey realizes that he has been slouching, which means he’s even more ridiculously large than she thought. He locks eyes with his mother. “I’m going home. I went to your stupid party and talked to someone. There.”

“I think I ought to leave, too,” Rey says. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Organa, Luke. _So_ sorry.”

As soon as she’s safely in her apartment, Rey changes into pajamas and tries to think about anything other than the fact that she hit the dean’s son in front of everyone, that he’s famous and huge and her teacher’s nephew, and she really ought to be facing assault charges if not expulsion, and she cannot shake the notion that _she should never have come here in the first place._

_You could feel better,_ a nasty voice whispers. _You know where the sharps are. And it’ll work so much faster than a silly_ breathing exercise. _You know what you have to do._

She eyes her desk where she has a new batch of reeds in progress, and all the accompanying equipment, including an X-acto, a box of razor blades, and knife made for reeds. Her heart thuds with the temptation.

But she remembers Maz’s kind eyes and how disappointed she’d be if she knew—so Rey rolls over in bed and does her breathing exercises until she falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of my lovely readers have stories as musicians in college, feel free to share them! I was a music minor at a liberal arts school so I have _some_ frame of reference, but I'd love to hear more. (You can also find me on tumblr @littlebassoonist.)
> 
> The idea of an oboist in a rock band is lifted from Aiden Chambers's _This Is All_ , a favorite book of mine.
> 
> The Knights of Ren named after Skyrim's Daedric Princes is taken from [ diasterisms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/diasterisms/profile).
> 
> Title comes from "In My Arms" by Jon Foreman.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for the positive reception to this fic so far! I'm a slut for validation from strangers on the internet, so keep it up.
> 
> It may be a few weeks before I'm able to update again. I have a big freelance gig I need to be working on, since that actually, you know, pays. 
> 
> Once again, if any of my lovely readers has stories, sordid or otherwise, from your time playing music in college, do share! I'd love to use anecdotes beyond the ones I experienced.

“You could have warned me,” Rey says hotly to Paige before their first orchestra rehearsal. Blessedly, Ben Solo is on the other side of the room, wetting his reed as far from the other students as he can get.

“I swear, I didn’t know Ben was going to be there until Poe mentioned it. What was I supposed to do, say ‘By the way, the dude you just described as an absolute dick happens to be the dean’s kid?’”

“Yes! And maybe that he’s my private teacher’s nephew, and basically music royalty with his family tree. I spent the whole weekend Googling his relatives. Did you know Padme Amidala was the first woman in America to professionally perform a concerto while heavily pregnant? Sibelius’s _Swan of Tuonela._ And she was having twins.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Any more surprises I should know about? Is Dr. Mothma secretly a neo-Nazi? Is the tuba teacher in the CIA?”

Paige shakes her head. “I think you know everything. Ben is, or was, Kylo Ren; Han Solo and Dr. Organa are his parents; Luke Skywalker is Dr. Organa’s brother; pretty much everyone in that family did music and is at least semi-famous.”

“Luke said he was here from Julliard.” Rey tries not to look at Ben, who is approaching his chair, as she speaks, and instead focuses more intently than necessary on attaching the bell of her bassoon to the long joint. 

Paige shrugs. “Maybe he got kicked out. Maybe he wanted to be closer to home. I don’t know.”

Dr. Kenobi, their orchestra conductor enters the room, but does not yet take the podium. The young women find their seats, which are diagonal from each other. To Rey’s left sits Finn, her second, and to her right, a woman called Jessika, the first clarinetist. Rose is a few chairs down at the end of the row, and directly in front of Rey is Ben.

“Sorry for not saying hi on Friday,” she says to Finn.

“Nah, it’s fine. I understand that you had your hands full with… other things.” He looks pointedly at the stupidly large shoulders in front of them.

Ben is entirely too big for this seating arrangement. Finn chuckles as she scooches her chair for a better view of the podium—any view of the podium, really—and ends up much closer to Jessika than she intended. 

“Sorry!” Rey says. “I’d scoot the other way, but…” She gestures to her horn and Finn’s, unwieldy instruments that don’t fit well in tight spaces. 

“It’s ok,” Jessika says. “We’ll be getting to know each other pretty well, anyway. And anyone who livens up one of Dr. Organa’s parties like you did on Friday is someone I want to be friends with.”

Rey reddens. She suspects that Ben must be able to hear them, but he doesn’t engage. Instead, as Dr. Kenobi steps up to the podium, Ben plays a tuning note, and the entire room falls quiet.

She’ll bet that he loves it, she thinks, even as she plays an A and matches her pitch to his, loves having a whole room hang on his breath, his playing. Even the concertmaster, a pasty ginger fellow who seems to be pretending the rest of the orchestra doesn’t exist, has to adjust his violin to the oboe. Rey wonders if that’s why he picked his instrument.

“Our first concert is in three weeks,” Dr. Kenobi says. “This concert will feature short performances from the school’s major ensembles. Here are the pieces you are responsible for.”

Sheet music is quickly passed out: two movements of a Strauss suite, a Mozart aria she has never heard of before, a movement from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. Apparently the orchestra will be accompanying the opera and ballet programs in addition to playing the Strauss. Jessika whispers to her that the wind symphony and a few chamber groups will be featured as well, so Rey should be prepared to be on stage a fair amount. “A musical sample platter” Jessika calls it. 

Rey is rarely confident when playing in an ensemble—too much pressure, too many people relying on her, too many ears to hear her falter—but she can’t remember a time when she didn’t enjoy sightreading. This music is new to them, which means there is an unspoken grace they give each other for mistakes. But Rey rarely makes major mistakes while sightreading. Maz called it intuition; Rey calls it an adrenaline high. She doesn’t have any history with the music, no time to psych herself up about tough passages, no memories of botching that particular run to feed her nerves. So when Dr. Kenobi raises his baton for them to begin the Strauss, her body is alight with excitement.

Dr. Kenobi is a wizard with the baton.

He needs only to flick his wrist for sound to burst into life from the orchestra. He moves with every confidence that they will follow. He looks comfortable enough to leap from the podium and let the music catch him, if only he weren’t so frail and wizened. But he doesn’t look old, not when he’s eliciting a swelling crescendo or a sudden marcato entrance from the brass.

Maz always had a look of suspicion about her while conducting, as though she couldn’t be sure that the music would be there from one measure to the next. Each beat of the baton was an opportunity for someone to make a wrong entrance or to ignore a key change, and she, like a mother duck, was too consumed with keeping her babies in line to relax. 

But this is nothing like music with Maz, and _oh_ , maybe coming to music school is the best idea Rey has ever had.

They play the piece from top to bottom without stopping to address any mistakes, or to clarify just how _rubato_ that passage ought to be, or to tell the trombones to quiet down and let the violas come through. There will be time for that in the coming weeks. 

When the last note fades, Rey can already feel the high of sightreading fading as she starts to mentally catalog the spots that warrant revisiting in a practice room. Still, she looks over at Finn and Ezra, their third and contra player, and grins. 

“Good job,” she says quietly, if only because she feels like she needs to say something. The room is astir with murmurs and pencils scratching and players shedding passages while Dr. Kenobi allows them a moment to orient themselves.

“You too,” Finn replies.

“Have you ever played with dancers before? I’ve played under vocalists, but the Tchaik is going to be all new for me.”

Finn looks like he might be about to answer, but he’s cut short by a cough from Dr. Kenobi.

The rehearsal proceeds remarkably well as far as Rey is concerned. The pieces are not so easy as to be boring or so difficult as to fill her with self-loathing. When the woodwinds are featured more heavily, there chemistry between her, Paige, Jessika, and—loathe as she is to admit it—Ben is undeniable. The four of them trade off lilting runs and motifs as smoothly as breathing.

And Rey realizes that Finn is everything she could have wanted in a second.

She knows that she likes him just from the conversations they shared around chair placement auditions. But she was willing to chalk that up to them bonding over a shared uncomfortable experience, their mutual jitters about playing for a panel of teachers. It is with a swell of happiness that she finds they _do_ connect well, not just when they’re both pretending not to be anxious. 

Finn quietly tunes himself to her when they play in unison and is unfailingly in time. His playing is reliable, if a bit shy, content to stay out of the spotlight. He counts measures with her, silently mouthing numbers and holding out fingers for her to see. It’s a relief to know that if she gets lost, at least she’s lost with him. 

“See you in Theory?” she asks him at the end of rehearsal, threading a swab through the joints of her bassoon.

“Of course,” he replies with an easy smile. “Maybe we can sit together.”

“I’d like that,” she says, a strange warmth blossoming in her chest. It doesn’t feel all white-hot and nerve-wracking like attraction—no. This is something more secure, more grounded than a crush. She nestles the last piece of her horn into its velvet-lined case, watching Finn chat amicably with the Tico sisters as they walk out of the room, and she finds herself looking forward to class if only to see him again.

_Oh,_ she realizes. Her calloused grip tightens on the handle of her bassoon case. _I have friends._

It’s a nice thought to have—nice enough to help her forget about Kylo Ren and the shadow he cast over the whole rehearsal.

She has thirty minutes before Music Theory, too short to settle into a practice room and too long to wait outside the classroom door. So she finds her way to the double reed studio where she can pass the time by adjusting her reeds. Her main reed has performed admirably today, but the E-flat could use a little stabilizing. 

Reed-making is still relatively new for Rey, who made do with store-bought reeds until her final year of school, so she appreciates the privacy offered by the studio. Whenever she whittles her oh-so-delicate reeds with a knife, she’s worried that she’ll ruin it. One push too hard or one poorly angled scrape can destroy a reed, and prying eyes only make her more nervous. She pushes the door open to her little sanctuary, and—

And Ben is there. He sits in a corner, tying a plain, black thread to a table leg. 

She could turn around and shut the door, pretend it was a silly mistake. She could say that she _didn’t_ mean to walk into the studio that is expressly for people who play her instrument. Her reed isn’t desperate for work, anyway. She can hide in a corner and wish for the sweet relief of something sharp and make a policy of never entering the studio ever again.

But then he looks up, recognition dawning on his face. Her chance to escape unnoticed disappears. 

Rey enters and deliberately sets her things a few seats away from Ben. She’s not in the furthest seat from him—too awkward, too obvious, too cowardly—but neither is she close enough for her to hit him again, should the mood strike. A good thing, too, as they’re both holding knives.

They could pass the whole break in silence. They could act like Friday’s party never happened, like Kylo’s cruel comment five years ago never happened, like neither of them have ever heard of a band called the Knights of Ren. They _could_ do that… except Rey would be sitting there with a dozen questions gnawing at her mind, and the longer she waits to ask, the more awkward it will be when she does. 

She hasn’t even finished penciling the areas she wants to scrape away when she works up the nerve to speak.

“Sorry, again.” 

He doesn’t say anything. She draws another line to guide her knife along the delicate wood.

“About hitting you. It was uncalled for.” 

The air between them is thick with silence, his silence, just the soft rustling sounds of wood and string and friction. 

Rey isn’t sure how many minutes have passed when she tries again. She has her knife in hand now, ready to start the tricky work of fixing her reed. She gently rocks the blade across her reed, just firmly enough to scrape away the pencil markings. It’s a soothing, repetitive motion, and the gray pencil marks fade away before her eyes. She sucks in a breath and is about to speak when— 

“You don’t have to be so chatty. Especially not in rehearsals.”

Mortification burns a hole in her chest—at his lack of all pretense, at his harsh words, and at the unfortunate way his voice in close quarters makes her melt a little bit. But then indignation rises up, fills the hole where her heart just plummeted. “I was just trying to get to know my fellow musicians.”

“We’re not here to make friends,” he says.

“Maybe _you’re_ not, but I don’t see the harm in being kind to my peers. And didn’t you mother say—”

“It was a party. She had to say that, or some other sentimental bull.”

“Finn’s nice. We met at auditions and hit it off really well.”

Ben scoffs. “Oh, please. You don’t think he’s going to be trying like hell to take the first spot next semester? And your third—how does _he_ feel, getting beat out by two freshmen? And all the bassoonists in the lower ensembles? A good second supports his first, and he’s ready to step in the moment they screw up. It’s just a waiting game.”

Rey blinks at him, stunned, her reed knife frozen in place. There’s a nick, a tiny divot, on the smooth surface of the cane. _Fuck_. 

“How do you live like that?” she manages.

“Don’t screw up,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. 

She tries to imagine the shy young man playing second oboe. Mitaka, his name might be? He doesn’t strike her as someone waiting for the right moment to usurp the first chair. But then again, Rey isn’t sure if she gives off the impression of a principle player. Maybe Mitaka is actually quite cunning and is plotting a coup. Maybe Finn is doing the same.

Almost of its own accord, the blade resumes its careful dance on the reed, now smoothing out the unfortunate nick. The cane is thinner than she would like, but not ruined. She’d like to test it, and she would, if she were alone in the studio. Following up Ben’s cynical speech with the squawking crow of a reed seems irreverent, immature.

The clock ticks ever closer to Theory class. She can leave him with his string and cork and cane.

But then she won’t have an answer to the stupid question echoing in her skull.

“So you remembered me?” Rey asks.

She isn’t trying to start anything, she swears, but—she can’t shake the whisper in her head that he remembered her video because she was so truly awful.

At last, Ben stops fiddling with his reeds, and he takes a deep breath.

“Yeah. Not well, but yeah.”

“Um, am I going to get my feelings hurt if I ask you _why_ you remembered me?”

He rolls his eyes. “What do you expect me to say? You were the first and, as far as I know, only person to cover Knights of Ren on bassoon. Of course I’d remember that, no matter the quality of the performance.”

“And what is that supposed to mean, exactly?”

Ok, _now_ she’s trying to start something.

“You already got my apology,” he says.

“Because your mother forced you.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, “that you’re so insecure that your entire musical identity hinges on one YouTube comment. I’m sorry that you can’t get over one sentence I wrote five years ago. I was a piece of shit, probably still am. Don’t get so hung up on one comment from one asshole on the internet.”

“I was thirteen!” she protests.

“And now you’re the principle player at a prestigious conservatory. You don’t need me to tell you that you’re a good musician.”

It hangs between them, the silent and ugly truth that he has seen right through her after just two conversations. She feels like she’s been stripped naked by just a few sentences, and now is the absolute worst time to notice that his lips are invitingly plush.

“I have to go to class,” she says, and she hopes the way the door closes behind her is dramatic and leaves him feeling alone.

Rey spends most of her first Theory class trying and failing not to think about what Ben said. Finn does choose a seat beside her, but it’s difficult to appreciate the gesture in her jumble of raw emotions. She is beyond grateful that Dr. Ackbar is just going over the syllabus instead of teaching an actual lesson.

Wracking her memory of the rehearsal, she replays her conversations on a loop. In her mind’s eye, Jess seems happy enough to talk with her. Paige doesn’t chastise her for the talking, and she’s sitting diagonally from her. Finn is kind enough to offer to sit by her. She could have sworn she heard the brass players mumbling behind her and seen some of the violists talk in between playing. But no, Ben singled out her for talking.

Maybe Jessika and Finn and Ezra and Paige were all too nice to tell her to zip it. Maybe Finn is just being nice by sitting beside her. Maybe he’s just there out of convenience, and he can’t wait to hear her botch a solo. Besides, he’s an easygoing guy who makes friends easily, judging by the way he whispers to the violist sitting in front of them and his conversation with the Ticos after orchestra. That’s probably just who he is.

Only one way to find out, she thinks.

“Do you wanna grab lunch together?” she blurts out to Finn after class. “Oh,” she adds, reaching a hand out to tap Rose on the shoulder, “you, too. Lunch?”

Rose and Finn exchange shrugs, then smiles. “Sure,” Finn says. “Lead the way.”

On the walk to the food court, it turns out that Finn and Rose met before today.

“At the mixer,” Finn clarifies, “after you, you know. Slapped the dean’s son.”

“Paige _is_ sorry she didn’t tell you sooner,” Rose says. “She got super guilty after you left and got all wine drunk to deal with it. I had to stop Poe from putting her on his SnapChat story like that.”

“If I had known he was Skywalker royalty,” Rey starts, “I wouldn’t have hit him. I’d have, I dunno, just yelled at him a lot. Maybe privately.” Except that she now knows what she’s like when she’s alone with him, all emotionally bare. “And it’s weird—his mum didn’t even seem surprised when I explained it all.”

“What is ‘it all’?” Finn asks.

While they stand in line for the sushi bar, Rey fills him in. She’s quietly touched to realize that Rose and Paige didn’t spill her story at the mixer, even though she’s sure everyone was wondering why the new British girl slapped Kylo Ren.

_Not here to make friends,_ the ugly voice inside her says.

“Paige did say that he went on a classic teen star meltdown around the time he quit the band,” Rose, holding a plate of spider rolls, points out. “Cyberbullying is probably, like, the least offensive thing he’s done.”

The three of them find a table in between a brooding boy scribbling in a notebook and  
some vocalists debating about how long before a performance they should stop eating dairy. Rey wastes no time before digging into her crunchy roll.

“Did he seem all hoity-toity during rehearsal to you guys?” Finn asks in between bites. “I mean, we just had the view of his shoulders, but even that made him look stuck up.”

“Paige said he didn’t say a word the whole two hours,” Rose says. “Not to her, not to his second, nobody.”

“He’s not here to make friends,” Rey says. If her companions think it’s a strange thing for her to say, they don’t bring it up.

“Well, he’s doing a great job of that,” Finn says. He raises his Coke bottle in a mock toast. “Screw him.”

“Screw him,” Rose echoes, tapping her drink against Finn’s.

It should be easy to join in with these people who don’t think she’s crazy after what happened Friday night, people who seem to be funny and friendly and kind. It should be the simplest thing—except for how he remembered her, and he sort of said she plays well, and Luke’s look of shame and Dr. Organa’s resignation, and surely there’s something more there—

But Rose and Finn are here, sharing food and smiles with her, and he is not. She doubts he’s sharing anything with anyone.

Rey adds her water bottle to the toast. “Screw him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, the _Swan of Tuonela_ isn't technically an English horn concerto, but there aren't a lot of pieces to choose from. Also, I have no idea what the history of is in regards to pro musicians performing while pregnant. In this slightly AU version of our world, let's pretend that Padme Amidala is a legend for breaking barriers for women in music. 
> 
> Writing this chapter made me long for the double reed studio at one of the colleges I visited.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, all. Sorry for the delay. 2020, you know? 
> 
> This fic now has a [ Spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1tmvKWXfgpVXNMAcogFYxB?si=WUJfh7LBQ2CMD7r5sPAIfw). It's a mix of tunes mentioned in the text and pop songs that remind me of our favorite double reed playing idiots.

Rey spends more time than is probably healthy reading about Ben Solo’s family. Most of them have their own Wikipedia pages for their contributions to the musical world. 

She finds herself awash in a mix of awe of envy. 

Padme Amidala, the mother Luke and Dr. Organa—Leia, her first name is—was an celebrated oboist who specialized in the English horn. As Rey mentioned to Paige, Padme was equally famous for championing female representation in the orchestral world and for continuing to perform throughout her pregnancy. 

She died of postpartum complications. Or an aneurysm. Or a preexisting condition that she kept secret her whole life. It’s not clear, and most of the information Rey can find is steeped in speculation that Padme should have “taken it easy” during her third trimester.

-

Rey and Finn sit side by side in the lounge by a hall of practice rooms. They’re scribbling in homework for theory class. Across the room, Paige and Rose are on a video call with their parents. The bassoonists label key signatures in relative silence, only speaking to confirm answers with each other.

“E-flat major,” Rey says, glancing between her paper and the laughing Tico sisters. 

“Rosie is doing great, Mom,” Paige says. “Jess has nothing but good things to say about her playing.

“I _told_ you not to call me that!” Rose says, playfully shoving her sister. 

“You sure about that?” Finn asks. 

There’s a D-flat sitting starkly on the page, mocking. “Rats. You’re right.”

Rey doesn’t even bother thinking about the next key signature. She’s too busy watching Rose and Paige locked in a shoulder-nudging match.

“Homesick?” Finn suggests quietly. 

“Why would you say that?”

“Because the next one is C major, and I know you know that.”

She looks at the paper, and there it is, clear as day. No sharps, no flats, just a treble clef on the staff. Rey hastily writes in her answer. “Do you have any siblings?”

“Too many.” She can hear his smile in his words. “I’m one of seven.”

At last, Rey pulls her eyes away from the Ticos, now poking each other out of the view of their parents’ camera, to gape at him. “Seven? How did your mother manage?”

“With a good lawyer.” At her obvious confusion, he adds, “We’re all adopted. I’m the second oldest.”

“Sounds nice.” She tries to keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

“Sure, but sometimes it feels like she’s trying to raise up an army of child prodigies, or something. She and my dad are _ridiculously_ strict about practicing.”

“Is that why you’re so good at treble clef? I mean, you’re fluent.”

He smiles. “Yeah, that and I played sax for a few years before making the switch. All this theory stuff so far is the sort of thing my parents drilled into me when I was, like, eight.”

“They sound…” She searches for a polite word. “Intense.”

Rey has known intense parents, the ones who have standards held above their children’s heads like carrots before a donkey. She preferred the parents who didn’t care what she did, like Unkar. Unkar didn’t seem to care about Rey at all.

“Don’t get me wrong—I love my parents. And there’s no telling where I’d be if they didn’t adopt me. Not here, probably. But they could stand to ease up on my little siblings.”

She can hardly tell what’s happening before the words leave her mouth: “I was a foster kid. Never got adopted. Never knew what happened to my parents.”

Rey dimly notices that the Tico video call is winding down in volume. The poke fight has ceased, and the girls are making their goodbyes.

“That’s rough. I’m sorry.” Finn drops his pencil and pats her shoulder. “You want to talk about it?”

“Nope.” She looks back to their homework and sees five sharps on the staff. “But thanks. B major?”

-

Luke Skywalker was raised by Owen and Behru Lars. Wikipedia does not explain why Luke does not use his adoptive parents’ last name, but it could just be that “Luke Lars” is a lame name. 

Owen played clarinet, but he made a name for himself as a woodwind creator and repairman. He made custom instruments, including a saxophone for Bill Clinton. Behru was a composer and choir conductor whose children’s choirs toured worldwide, though she herself shied from media attention. 

_Those_ are the people who raised Luke. Quiet musical geniuses whose talents reached Sydney Opera House and Prince Albert Hall and the White House. Rey now has, like, four degrees of separation between her and Hillary Clinton. 

When Rey gets to the article about a catastrophic fire that overtook the Lars home with both of them inside, she wonders just how much tragedy this family is steeped in. 

-

“I’m happy to see that your assault on my nephew hasn’t damaged your hands enough to play.”

“I’m _very_ sorry about that, sir, again.”

He scoffs. “No ‘sir,’ please. And that kid probably needs someone to smack some decency into him. What he said to you, no matter how long ago, was inexcusable.”

_But he_ was _just a kid, too,_ she thinks, though she doesn’t dare say it. “What are we working on today?”

“My job as your teacher is to help you get ready to be a professional bassoonist. We’ll work on adding major pieces to your repertoire—the sorts of things that show up on auditions that any bassoonist should know—as well as etudes and any pieces from your ensembles that are giving you trouble.”

He taps a book on the music stand. “Have No. 1 playable next week. You’ll also need to have something prepared for masterclass. Now, I know from your audition that you know the Mozart front and back. Just for this week, how about you play the first movement then?”

Rey nods eagerly. If there’s anything she thinks she won’t royally fuck up, it’s the Mozart. They dive into their lesson, where Luke drills her on scales before having her run through the first movement of the Mozart twice. He offers a few notes that she scrawls on her sheet music in barely legible pencil and doesn’t comment when her horn squeaks during a run. His silence is on the one hand a comfort—he isn’t making a point of her every mistake—though on the other hand, it rings of disappointment.

“I’m sure your classmates will have more insightful feedback for you at masterclass than I can give you now. Anything else you want to cover today?”

“In the Tchaik, I felt a bit pitchy, and the Strauss certainly isn’t _easy_ , but… I think I feel ok. Though woodwind quintet meets tomorrow, and I’m sure that’ll give me something to worry about.”

“I want you to go to the library and get your hands on the Vivaldi Concerto in e minor. That’s your homework, along with etude No. 1. I’ll see you in masterclass, and then this time next week.”

-

The Organas are about as different from the Larses as possible while still being deeply entrenched in classical music. Breha and Bail live in the public eye, a world-famous coloratura and a flamboyant pianist-slash-conductor who Rey thinks of as a cross between Leonard Bernstein and Gustavo Dudamel. Unlike many of the other members of the Skywalker family, Rey has actually _heard_ of Bail Organa before now. She’s watched the YouTube video of him playing and conducting _Rhapsody in Blue_ more times than she can count. 

Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa are impressive figures themselves, though Luke has managed not to earn himself a Wikipedia page and is relegated to notes in the family members’. He is most known for playing contrabassoon for the Coruscant Philharmonic Orchestra, and has substituted for New York and Vienna, among others. 

Leia takes after her birth mother, an oboist and English horn player, though she seems to have retained her adoptive parents’ passions for teaching, theatrics, and philanthropy. She, like most of the Conservatory faculty, divides her time between teaching and performing with the CPO. She had a public and tumultuous marriage to guitarist Han Solo until their divorce last year. 

Wikipedia says that the couple have one child. It does not say anything about the Knights of Ren.

-

Finn is in crisis at lunch. “My baby sister has decided to play oboe. She, and I quote, ‘wants to be more like Finn.’ Blech!”

“Is it really that bad?” Rey asks. “I mean, I wanted to play oboe at first.”

“One: oboists are insufferable. Prove me wrong. Two: she is condemning herself to a life of misery over reeds. I know what she’s getting into, but she doesn’t. Three: I will have to listen to her play at recitals, and the learning curve kind of sucks. It’ll probably take three years before she sounds good, and I don’t have the heart to tell anyone, least of all my baby sister, they’re bad. I’m too nice!”

Rose and Rey share a sideways glance but say nothing. Finn stabs at his lasagna and continues his diatribe.

“Four: I’m pretty sure oboists are more likely than other musicians to get an aneurysm, or whatever. Something about the constant pressure?” He pantomimes an oboe in front of him and pulls a strained face, looking remarkably similar to Mitaka for a moment. 

“I don’t think that’s how biology works,” Rose says, but she’s smiling anyway. 

“Alright, Ms. Dr. Neuroscientist, why wouldn’t playing oboe kill my sister?”

“The human body has _got_ to be more durable than that. If women can survive pushing what amounts to ten-pound bowling balls out of their nether bits, you can survive squeezing your head to play oboe.”

Finn blanches. 

“Sounds fake to me,” Rey adds. “But you make a good point. They always look like they’re in pain, or trying to move something telekinetically.”

He makes the Mitaka face again, sending the whole table into a laughing fit.

“But hypothetically,” Finn continues, “if you _did_ manage to pass out or something while playing, I think oboe would be the scariest. The reed looks so sharp and pointy, you know? I’d be terrified that the weight of my falling body would—”

He takes his plastic knife, sticky with marinara, in one hand and a napkin in the other. Pulling the thin paper taut, he punctures it with a knife. The napkin _rips_ , and droplets of red sauce spatter the table.

“That’s definitely not how biology works,” Rey says with a grimace. “Or oboes. Or probably gravity.”

“What! It’s like that one scene in _The Dark Knight_ with the Joker and the pencil, except with an oboe. It’s a perfectly rational fear.”

Rose pulls more napkins from the dispenser to help Finn clean up his marinara crime scene. Rey needs to shake the image of Ben bloody on stage from her mind—or at least shake the whatever-it-is-she-feels besides revulsion and sick humor at the idea of his death. It doesn’t seem fair, after all she’s read about his family, that he should die tragically, too. She diverts the conversation away from oboes and toward other grisly orchestral death. 

“What about an instrument-themed serial killer? Piano wire is an obvious place to start, but I’m sure someone could get creative. Cue the Joker-pencil-trick with an oboe, for instance.”

Finn’s face lights up. “Ooh, and there was that one guy on _Hannibal_ with the cello strings!”

“You could probably stage an ‘accident’ with a precariously placed tuba in its case,” Rose suggests. “Any case bigger than a saxophone could probably do some real damage.”

Feelings sufficiently buried, Rey goes a whole forty-five minutes without sparing Ben Solo a single thought. 

-

And the crown of this incredible family is Anakin Skywalker, child prodigy, composer, and a master of no fewer than seven instruments: piano, violin, harp, cello, French horn, oboe, bassoon. There’s a recording of him playing Ravel’s piano concerto, which is admirable in its own right, but then she learns that he was _twelve_ at the time of the performance, and she could cry.

Anakin and Padme met as teenagers and married in their early twenties. By all accounts, theirs was a quiet relationship, but an intense one. There are rumors about addiction and alcoholism and fits of rage, though the only thing that has been confirmed is that Anakin died a week after his wife. It was ruled an accidental overdose. He was only twenty-eight.

-

Rey has never played in a woodwind quintet before, but soon she finds herself in a classroom with four of the top musicians (Jess, Paige, Poe, Ben) in her school, expected to play alongside them. The room is fairly relaxed, as most rooms with Poe are, but everyone is more focused on warming up than on talking. Half of them barely register their instructor walking in the room.

“I’m Dr. Bey, French horn professor. You must be the new blood.”

Ben and Rey share a quick look. It occurs to Rey that Jessika, Paige, and Poe are all upperclassmen. Ben, too, is older, though he is a transfer student. She is the lone freshman.

“I’m Rey,” she says, shrugging, hoping she looks casual. 

“Nice to meet you, Rey. And I already know you, Ben. Welcome home—it’s Julliard’s loss.” Dr. Bey turns to face the group at large. “We have seven minutes to fill at the upcoming concert. I have some ideas for what I’d like you to play, so let’s sight-read our options and see what happens.”

They divvy up sheet music for three different pieces, all upbeat pieces if the lack of long tones and rests on Rey’s page is any indication. She eyes any fast-looking runs, any appearances of the word “solo” (which is now a _doubly_ anxiety-inducing word, thanks to Kylo Ren’s alter ego), and mimes the fingerings on her horn. On her left, Paige circles a key change in pencil. On her right, Poe is bantering with the professor about her choice of music. 

All too soon, at Dr. Bey’s direction, Ben plays his tuning note. He has an annoyingly smug look on his face when Rey has to noticeably adjust her embouchure to match him. If the other three musicians are similarly out-of-tune, she doesn’t hear it. She only knows that _he_ knows that she was sharp.

_Aneurysm, aneurysm, aneurysm,_ she thinks in his direction.

Ben does not keel over dead. He does not budge, and there is no bloodbath. There is just him, his eyes flitting between his music and the rest of the quintet. 

And then, after the shuffle of sheet music, they play.

A woodwind quintet, Rey discovers, is utterly unlike orchestra. Gone are the rigid lines of the wind section; they sit close together, facing one another in a semicircle. She can’t hide within her section or lean on Finn for support; she’s naked, the only bassoonist, the lowest voice in the room. Quintet has the potential to be absolutely terrifying, a total disaster for Rey to humiliate herself in front of the other first chairs. 

They start with an arrangement of a ragtime ditty, something short and quick, the sort of thing she’d expect to be played on an out-of-tune piano in a saloon. Her part is surprisingly varied—she plays bouncing bass notes with Poe, she weaves in a countermelody to Paige, she trades ornamental runs with Jessika. And she and Ben have whole passages where they share the theme. And Rey hates to admit it, but it’s electric.

There’s something paradoxical about these measures they play together: it’s sightreading, so Rey has no way to be sure of what will come next, yet she feels an absolute certainty of—something—with Ben. Confidence in him, in herself, in their instruments to stay in tune, or something else entirely, she isn’t quite sure. It’s like they’re in freefall, creating art that disappears as soon as it is born, and still, she feels safe.

Maybe it’s the fact that Dr. Bey has them sitting directly across from one another, so they have direct eye contact. Maybe it’s just a holdover from their previous encounters, a little bit of unresolved emotional tension that is working itself out in the music. Maybe it’s a fluke. But _damn_ , Rey thinks, playing with Ben Solo is one of the most thrilling things she’s ever done. 

The piece is over far too soon.

“Well,” Dr. Bey says, “I think that one will certainly work, especially with a bit of practice. Any objections?”

Nobody says a word. Over their music stands, Ben and Rey’s eyes meet, and even though the room is silent, the electricity lingers between them. 

“Well done all around. But Rey, and especially you, Poe, you’ll need to be in lockstep driving the tempo in this one. Those low notes you trade will keep everyone else in line.” She addresses Poe directly. “And that means practicing with a metronome, mister.”

“Yes, Mom,” he says, in the most sheepish Rey has heard him. She hasn’t even realized Poe was capable of sounding sheepish.

“I’m sorry, but what?” Rey asks. 

-

Padme, Owen, Behru, Breha, Bail, and Anakin met through the Coruscant Philharmonic Orchestra and bonded over a desire to see the arts promoted in the city’s marginalized communities. Together, they founded The Resistance Foundation—and within it, the Skywalker Conservatory. 

The Resistance Foundation contains a sister school for the arts, funds liberal arts programs in inner city schools, supports community music ensembles and art classes, and a host of philanthropic activities that make Rey’s eyes glaze over. Finally, at an ungodly hour between Tuesday and Wednesday, she closes the tab to Wikipedia and goes to sleep.

She dreams about Unkar and oboes and orphans.

-

“I don’t see how it’s relevant,” Finn says quietly. He and Rey wind their way through the practice room halls, on their way to the double reed workshop. 

“She his _mum_. Of course it’s relevant.”

“I mean, yeah, it would be weird for her to call him ‘mister’ like that if they weren’t related. But did it change any of the rehearsal otherwise?”

“It threw me off my game,” Rey grumbles. “I wasn’t messing up, exactly, but there wasn’t that spark, you know? Like, before I knew, everything was _alive_. After, it sounded fine, but it didn’t feel right.”

“And you think it’s because Dr. Bey is Poe’s mom? Specifically, it’s the fact that you knew about it?”

She rolls her eyes. “Ok, it sounds bonkers when you put it like that. But I still stand by the fact that Poe should have disclosed this information earlier.”

Finn laughs. “You’d like everyone at this school to go around with genealogy charts for you to read before you meet them, huh?”

“Yes! It would—”

A sound down the hall makes her pause. 

“You ok, Rey? The door’s just over here, or did you forget?”

“Be there in a moment,” she says over her shoulder, following the voice that stopped her midsentence. 

“—you stop me?”

“—vibrato needs a little work here—” 

“My vibrato was flawless,” Ben interrupts. 

Dr. Organa, that must be who’s talking to him, sighs. “It was by the book. Maybe even perfect. But too rigid, rhythmic. I shouldn’t be able to predict exactly when each pulse will come. The music should surprise me.”

Rey knows this is wrong, listening in on another’s lesson, but the door is ajar, and she can always claim she was just walking the halls. As long as she keeps moving, she can deny any wrongdoing. She slowly makes her way to the end of the hall, entranced by the conversation. 

“If Mitaka had played this—which he _can’t_ —you wouldn’t get up his ass about having ‘perfect vibrato,’ as if that’s a bad thing!”

Rey stops, pretends to have an urgent text, and stands still as if to read it.

“Are these the kinds of ‘differences of opinion’ that got between you and Juilliard?”

“Oh, for Chrissake—”

Sensing that she has long outstayed her welcome in this hallway, Rey runs back to Finn, wishing she could forget having heard anything.


End file.
